Sputnik seems to generally not be big on soul and pretty much oblivious to funk. Fishbone is a funk-rock band who was an inspiration to many popular bands of the 90's, including No Doubt, Primus, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Their opus, The Reality of My Surroundings is energetic, ambitious, and entertaining. Fishbone rocks with a vital force and conveys the reality of their upbringing in the bad part of L.A., while conveying an atmosphere of positivity and fun throughout the album. Oh, and they're the best live band ever.

This album is a pure masterpiece. The album was composed by Robert Wyatt, former drummer for Cantebury-scene progressive rock band Soft Machine, after a fall which left him paralyzed from the waist down. Intense, mellow, intimate, touching, and endlessly exuberant, Rock Bottom may be the greatest rock album ever made.

I don't care how intense and harrowing you say whatever extreme metal you listen to is, it probably doesn't even come close to this album. Standouts are George Crumb's Black Angels and Istavan Marta's Doom. A Sigh

If you know anything about jazz, you've heard of this album. It's Coltrane's masterpiece and possibly the greatest jazz album ever. Language can't convey how great it is. If you haven't heard this, listen to it. Now.

Maybe it's just me, but I'd say this is tied for best hip-hop album ever with Nation of Millions. There's no easy categorization for this album, it greatly expanded the borders of experimental hip-hop. There's definitely weird stuff here, but it's not too difficult to get into.

John Fahey is one of the most overlooked guitar legends. This album is his best and also most complex, deemed even by him to be impossible live. The album is entirely instrumental, featuring Fahey alone, and is a stupendous fusion of American folk music and the Indian raga. Fahey's playing here is hypnotic, poetic, and transcendental.

The Residents are the only band to out-Zappa Frank Zappa. While this album displays a huge range of sounds, the music is arctic cold and often extremely bleak. It's a difficult listen, but an extremely rewarding listening experience.

Something a bit less experimental for a change. Morphine was a guitar-less rock trio, featuring Mark Sandman on vocals and two-stringed slide bass and Dana Colley on Saxophone. This album is their best, although 1993's "Cure for Pain" comes close. The music has a very dark and warm sound, and Sandman's crooning is extremely soothing. Just relax, plug in, and let Morphine take you to the other side.

Mark Lanegan proved himself to be a modern blues master with this one. Lanegan's emotional outpouring gives the impression that the album was recorded one night after a bad breakup with a bottle of whiskey in hand, with the music's lush textures providing beautiful, intense accompaniment to Lanegan's voice. Heck, it even rocks pretty hard sometimes.

Warning: This is an extremely difficult listen. Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach transformed classical and minimalism into an operatic language. Given it's length, this is best listened to similar to the way it was performed, as a sort of background music. The extreme repetition is mesmerizing and often dazzling, with major changes becoming seismic events. Though it is an opera, it is also abstract, so don't go into this looking for a story.

The most emotional work of jazz I've ever heard "The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady" is an exploration of the endless possibilities of musical colors. The music draws from a huge range of sources, all of which are put to use in an endlessly changing series of textures to convey emotions of rage, excitement, joy, and sorrow.

Probably best known as the father of Jeff Buckley, he's also the better musician of the two (no disrespect to Jeff). "Lorca" is his best album ("Starsailor" comes close), a series of seemingly stream-of-conscious songs. Buckley not only achieves an exciting fusion of rock, jazz, folk, and psychedelia but also expands the uses of the human voice on this album. One of the very best rock albums ever.

Hash Jar Tempo is a collaboration between experimental guitarist Roy Montgomery and Bardo Pond. This album is an improvised jam session that takes psychedelic music to new heights. Merging everything from Velvet Underground's drone to Blue Cheer's guitar freakout to My Bloody Valentine's magical textures, Hash Jar Tempo leaves the world of traditional rock music far behind. If Pink Floyd's music is lunar, these guys are intergalactic.

Arguably Nick Cave's finest album, he and The Bad Seeds fuse rock, blues, gospel, and other spiritual music. Compounded with Cave's storytelling, the result is an engaging, lush, and cathartic experience.